Chapter 74 - The Light We Lost

There are so many moments that change a person’s world. Some are because of a decision that’s made. Others, I think, might be because of the universe, fate, God, a higher power, whatever you want to call it. I don’t know. I’ve been wrestling with this question for thirteen years now.

That Tuesday I was on my way to work in a taxicab. Maybe it was the uncertainty or the guilt or the fact that I hadn’t spoken to you about it yet, but the nausea those few weeks after I realized I was pregnant was so awful that I didn’t want to risk riding the subway and vomiting on the stranger next to me. So I was taking cabs. Darren offered to get a driver to take me to and from work, but that felt excessive. Instead, I hailed a cab each morning. And sometimes on the way home too. Whoever named it “morning sickness” was an optimist. I carried at least two plastic bags in my purse at all times, but so far I hadn’t actually thrown up in a cab. My office was another story. I think I might have scared my poor assistant into celibacy.

I was breathing slowly, in through my nose, out through my mouth, trying to calm my body down. And then my cell phone rang. It was a number I didn’t know, but I picked up, in case it was something having to do with Violet or Liam. Becoming a mother changed my call-screening habits. The last thing I ever wanted to do was not pick up when one of my kids needed me.

“Hello?” I said.

“Is this Lucy Carter Maxwell?”

“Yes,” I answered, though there wasn’t anywhere other than Facebook that I was listed that way.

“This is Eric Weiss,” the person said. “I’m an executive editor at the Associated Press. I work with Gabriel Samson.”

“Yes?”

“I’m calling to let you know that Gabe has been hurt.”

He stopped talking. I stopped breathing.

“Hurt, but he’s okay?”

“He’s in a hospital in Jerusalem.”

Then my brain started catching up with my heart.

“Wait,” I said, “why are you calling me about this?”

I heard Eric take a deep breath on the other end of the phone. “I’m looking at Gabe’s personnel file, and you’re listed as his emergency contact and his medical proxy. It says you’re a good friend of his? We’re going to need you to make some decisions.”

“Decisions?” I repeated. “About what? What happened?”

“I’m sorry,” Eric said, “let me start over.”

Then he told me the story. You were in Gaza City. There was fighting in Shuja’iyya. There was an explosion, and you were too close. It happened too quickly for you to run. An Israeli medic took care of you in the field and the AP got you to a hospital in Jerusalem, but you hadn’t been responding to any stimuli and you couldn’t breathe on your own. He told me he didn’t think you’d recover. You had signed a DNR, but no one knew until you were already hooked up to machines, and now they needed my permission to take you off them.

“No,” I kept saying into the phone. “No, no, no, no, no.”

“Ma’am?” the cabdriver asked me. “Is everything all right?”

“Please turn around,” I whispered to him. “I need to go home.”

I went back to the apartment, climbed back into bed, and cried. For hours. Then I called Kate, giving her the broad strokes of what had happened to you.

“I think I have to go to Jerusalem,” I told her. “I can’t tell them to take Gabe off those machines before I see him again. I can’t let him die with no one there but strangers—or wake up, confused and hurting, all alone.”

“There’s a war there,” Kate said, as if the thoughts were unspooling in her mind as she was verbalizing them. “But I work with a corporation that’s headquartered in Tel Aviv, and they seem to be business as usual. So I don’t think it’s as dangerous as it sounds. At least not on the Israeli side.”

“And I’m pregnant,” I said, talking over her.

“You’re pregnant?” she sounded disconcerted, jumping from one train of conversation to the next. “When did . . . I didn’t think you wanted any more children. Hold on. Let me just—”

I heard the door to her office shut.

“Okay, so what’s going on?”

“It might be Gabe’s baby,” I said, quietly. “I don’t know.” I still hadn’t told her anything about us or about what had happened at the Warwick, which was why I hadn’t told her I was pregnant either. I was too ashamed, too worried about what she would think of me. But I’d reached a point where I didn’t care. I needed her. I needed someone to lean on.

“Oh, Lucy,” she said. “Lucy.” She paused for a moment. Then she said, “Why didn’t you tell me? Never mind, we can talk more later. For now: do you want me to come to Jerusalem with you?”

I made a sound that married a sob with a sigh of relief. “I love you,” I told her. “I’m sorry I didn’t . . . You’re the best best friend in the world.”

“Don’t you forget it,” she said.

“But even though I’m pregnant, even though there’s a war, I think I need to go to Jerusalem by myself.”

•   •   •

I KNEW EXPLAINING the situation to Darren—especially without explaining what had happened at the Warwick—wasn’t going to be easy. And probably I shouldn’t have tried. If I’d been serious about focusing on my marriage, I would’ve signed what I needed to sign from New York and told Eric Weiss that the doctors should do whatever they felt was best. But even though I knew that was what I should do, I couldn’t. Especially not if the baby I was carrying was ours. How could I explain to that child that I’d abandoned its father when he needed me most?

“Are you kidding?” Darren asked, his face incredulous, when I pulled him into our bedroom right after he got home from work. “You want me to let my pregnant wife fly into a war zone so she can sit at her ex-lover’s bedside?”

The way he said it made me more resolute. “It’s not as dangerous as it sounds,” I said. “And, Darren, I’m not asking you to let me do anything.”

“So you’re telling me you’re going? I have no say?” He was pacing in front of our bed. “Why the fuck did that asshole make you his medical proxy?”

I felt my eyes widen in shock. Darren almost never swore, and his voice was laced with such vitriol.

“I’m telling you I want to do this,” I said. “I’m telling you I need to do this, or I’ll regret it forever.” My voice choked up, and as I was saying those words, I was wondering: Would I break up my marriage over this? I’d asked you not to come back to New York for me, not to make me choose, but when it came down to it, I wondered if I’d choose you.

“Do you understand there’s a war there? Are planes even flying?”

I’d checked before he came home. “El Al is,” I said, stopping the trembling in my voice. “And they have the Iron Dome. It’s not like I’m going to Gaza. I’ll be safe.”

“What if something goes wrong with the baby?”

“Their emergency medicine is even better than ours,” I said. “I read about it online.” It was not the time to tell him that the baby might be yours. I wondered if it would ever be the time to tell him.

I could see Darren was calming down. I could see he was playing out the scenarios in his head and realizing this was an argument he wasn’t easily going to win.

“Please trust me,” I said. “This is something I need to do.”

He massaged his forehead for a moment.

“So help me God, Lucy,” he said finally. “I don’t know what it is about you and that man, how he keeps pulling you back into his orbit. He left you ten years ago. I’d think you wouldn’t forget something like that. If you have to go, go. But I want you back as soon as possible. By Sunday at the latest. It’s not safe there.”

“Fine,” I said. If I left tomorrow, that would give me three days in Jerusalem. I’d have liked more time, but if I wanted to come back to a marriage that wasn’t going to disintegrate upon reentry, I knew I had to compromise. And Darren really is a good man—even as upset as he was, he still agreed. That’s why all of this is so hard. It would be easier if he were a jerk.

So I booked my flight, and a return trip for Sunday morning. I packed my bag. I called Kate and told her my plan.

After everything that had happened between you and me, I couldn’t believe that this was where life had led us.